The return journey to Gloamreach Vale dragged on significantly longer than Liselotte had dared to anticipate.
When they stepped off the soft, springy moss of the Green Forest and onto the dried gravel and sharp, basalt rubble of the gorge, reality struck her with ruthless force.
Nyssara walked ahead with impeccable grace, taking long, confident strides; her demonic body seemed entirely oblivious to the distance covered or the toll of the battle they had fought.
Elarienne breathed a bit heavier, but her practical, flat boots provided her with total stability.
Liselotte, conversely, was experiencing a genuine march of torment.
Every single step on her twelve-centimeter stilettos sent a sharp jolt shooting through her feet.
Sharp rock fragments skidded out from under her lacquered heels, and the tendons in her calves burned with living fire.
But taking her shoes off and walking barefoot over the stone shards would end with her skin sliced to ribbons, so the servant pushed forward, swaying her hips in a desperate attempt to stay upright.
"My little feet... my poor, innocent little toes..." she groaned quietly under her breath, dragging her feet and resting her hands on her own thighs at every larger stone. "This cursed gravel is acting like it's personally conspired against my footwear!"
Elarienne glanced over her shoulder, arching an eyebrow with skepticism.
"You brought this curse upon yourself, Liselotte. You bartered away the ability to wear normal footwear for creator points, so now you are directly reaping what you sowed. You have no right to complain."
"I'm not complaining at all!" the servant protested immediately, though her chin trembled comically. "It was worth it! Every single point was worth it! Besides... I'm doing spectacularly well anyway!"
Deep down, Liselotte was genuinely shocked by her own achievements.
In her previous, lonely life, she had read dozens of erotic body-swap stories and manga.
In every single one of them, the guy who suddenly landed in a female body and tried to put on high heels broke his ankles after three steps, cried with shame, and couldn't cross a room without clinging to the wall.
But her? She had traversed a dense, wild forest, assisted in breaking up a wolf pack, and returned up a rocky slope under her own power!
Why does this come so naturally to me? she wondered for a fraction of a second, looking at her shapely calves, tightly encased in fishnet stockings. Maybe it's the agility inherited from the elves? Or succubus balance?
She shrugged lightly, causing her massive bust to bounce in her cleavage.
Eh. I'm probably just an innate genius at this.
Finally, the women reached the crest of the incline.
Before them lay the grim panorama of Gloamreach Vale, with the solitary altar in the center of the ruins.
The monumental stone of the Sovereign Nexus pulsed in the twilight with a deep, scarlet light, welcoming the returning monarch.
Nyssara didn't waste a moment.
She strode briskly to the monolith and placed her hand on its cool surface. A wide, translucent domain management pane unfolded before her eyes.
"Let us see what points of interest this altar possesses," the Empress tossed out matter-of-factly.
Elarienne and Liselotte stepped closer, flanking the altar.
"The unit roster is directly tethered to my Bloodline," Nyssara explained aloud, sharing the data from the system panel.
"At level one, I have merely two types of subordinates at my disposal. The first is the [Lesser Infernal Servant]. The summoning cost is exactly six Dominion Coins per unit. And it is the foundational laborer unit. The description indicates they are suited for hauling materials, felling timber, basic construction labor, excavation, and resource gathering."
"Six coins is a highly accessible price," Elarienne noted, tapping her staff against the floor. "We have nearly forty of them, so we can immediately deploy our first set of hands to work. And the second option?"
Nyssara narrowed her eyes slightly, reading the next entry.
"The second is the [Infernal Guard]. And this is an elite combat unit. But the summoning cost is one hundred coins. At this moment, it is entirely beyond our financial reach. We will have to slaughter a considerable amount of forest game before we can afford even a single guard."
Liselotte, leaning heavily against Nyssara's hip to give her aching feet a rest, craned her neck toward the screen the Demon Queen had shared with them.
Carrying capacity stats and endurance points interested her negligibly. Her ruby eyes zeroed in on the small preview miniature of the servant model.
"Wait, my Mistress..." Liselotte began, intrigued, her ears perking up happily. "Does that worker have... horns and red skin?"
Nyssara glanced at the unit's biological description.
"The Infernal Demon Empress Bloodline manifests subjects exclusively in female, demonic form," the Mistress confirmed. "Even the baseline laborers are demonesses with crimson complexions, athletic, powerful builds, and black horns."
In that exact fraction of a second, a light so wild and shameless exploded in Liselotte's eyes that the air around her practically hissed.
"Female demonesses?!" she squeaked in delight, clapping her hands. "An entire army of muscular, red women with horns?! This isn't just a Demon King's base, this is the absolute, most magnificent heaven on earth! I can already see how, after a hard day's work, I'll be able to - "
Nyssara slowly turned her head and looked at the maid with a coldness so icy and uncompromising that Liselotte choked mid-word.
"Liselotte," the Empress cut off firmly. "The new servants are a resource designated for the construction of fortifications and basic survival, not your personal collection of erotic toys. If you attempt to demoralize my labor force, I will personally test the durability of their pickaxes against you."
"Y-Yes, my Mistress..." the servant stammered meekly, shrinking under her gaze.
Nyssara returned to the Nexus panel. She selected the first entry and issued the command:
"Summon: [Lesser Infernal Servant]."
At that very moment, a wave of purple-gold light shot from the smooth surface of the black monolith.
The golden counter in the Mistress's treasury depleted by six coins, and the ancient runes carved into the base of the altar flared with blinding red.
The air around them swirled violently, carrying the familiar, heavy scent of heated sulfur.
Dark energy coalesced into a dense, pulsating cocoon right at the foot of the stairs. The shape stretched, solidified, and finally, with a quiet hiss, burst, releasing billows of smoke.
Before the three women stood a newborn demoness.
She was roughly a meter eighty tall, possessing an athletic, distinctly defined physique with broad shoulders and powerful thighs.
Her skin bore a smooth, dark red hue, and two short, straight black horns grew from her forehead.
Black, closely cropped hair framed sharp facial features and burning, yellow irises. She was clad in a rugged work outfit made of thick, dark leather, resembling a simple apron, with wraps around her hands.
The demoness immediately dropped to one knee, striking her fist against her own chest and bowing her head before the altar.
"My Empress," she spoke in a low, gravelly, yet perfectly intelligible voice. "I await your commands."
A brief, solemn silence fell over the ruins.
This was the first moment Nyssara truly felt the weight of her new role. This wasn't merely an interface or digits in a dialog box - she had a living, devoted entity before her, forged from her own energy and bloodline.
The Empress took a step forward, surveying the servant.
"Rise," she ordered calmly.
The demoness straightened up instantly, standing at attention.
"Do you comprehend everything I say to you?" the Mistress asked, initiating a test.
"Yes, Your Majesty. The Empress's speech is entirely clear to me."
"Do you possess knowledge regarding the construction of shelters, woodworking, and stonemasonry?"
"I possess the baseline artisanal instincts bestowed upon me by the Sovereign Nexus," the subordinate replied without hesitation. "I am capable of erecting simple palisades, leveling terrain, hewing stone, and transporting heavy loads."
"And your biological needs? Do you experience hunger? Fatigue?"
"My body requires sleep after roughly a dozen hours of intense labor, as well as a meal of meat or flora once a day to maintain optimal efficiency," the demoness explained with military precision.
Nyssara nodded with profound satisfaction.
These were not mindless, hollow golems, but fully functional, intelligent units with high discipline.
At that exact moment, Liselotte, whose gaze had already scanned the bouncy buttocks and firm, exposed midriff of the new demoness, began to slowly, on her tiptoes, creep toward her.
Her hands curled into the shape of predatory claws, ready to test the density of the crimson skin.
Before she could take two steps, however, a delicate hand grabbed her from behind by the collar of her corset, ruthlessly lifting her in place.
"Not a step further," came Elarienne's cold, unmoved voice.
Liselotte hung in the air, swinging her legs helplessly in her stilettos.
"Let me go, Elarienne!" the maid huffed. "I just wanted to check the elasticity!"
"You will not molest the very first citizen in the very first minute of her existence," the elf summarized dryly, holding her at a safe distance like an unruly puppy. "Allow Nyssara to manage the domain."
The Empress sighed, ignoring their scuffle, and returned to the panel.
They possessed thirty-nine coins. However, instead of draining the account to zero, Nyssara tapped the summon icon four more times.
Four more flashes of crimson light illuminated the ruins as four nearly identical, strong, red-skinned demonesses appeared on the altar, immediately swearing an oath of fealty.
Twenty-four coins were deducted from the pool, leaving a reserve of nine Dominion Coins in the treasury.
Liselotte, finally set down on the ground by Elarienne, tilted her head with curiosity.
"My Mistress, why didn't you summon one more? You had exactly enough for a sixth worker!"
Nyssara looked at her with the indulgent smirk of an experienced commander.
"Because, my dear degenerate, in state management, one always maintains a reserve for unforeseen contingencies. We do not know what expenses tomorrow will bring, nor how truly valuable these coins are. Spending all funds down to the very last copper is the purview of gamblers, not rulers."
Liselotte blinked, then pushed out her lips. The argument was too logical to dispute.
Nyssara immediately moved to action, addressing the five workers standing in formation:
"Your primary directives: clear the central courtyard of minor rubble. Stack the salvaged, usable stone in an even pile against the eastern wall. Next, unload the timber and raw materials from my spatial inventory and construct a makeshift, roofed depot beneath the surviving colonnade fragment. Finally, initiate ground preparation for a basic shelter. Execute."
"Yes, Your Imperial Majesty!" a choral, deep voice responded, and the demonesses immediately dispersed across the ruins, setting to heavy labor with inhuman efficiency.
Nyssara approached a wide stone block lying near the Nexus and sat on it, straightening her back.
Elarienne stood right beside her, resting a hand on her staff and recalling the terrain intelligence from memory.
"We have the foundations," the blonde began matter-of-factly. "The absolute priority for the next forty-eight hours must be securing a permanent supply of fresh water. I observed a small stream at the edge of the Green Forest, but we will require regular patrols to secure the transport route. Additionally, there is the matter of constructing a palisade facing the open gorge before the grace period expires..."
Nyssara nodded gravely, interjecting her own observations regarding the placement of observation posts on the high cliffs and the stockpiling of dried meat.
Both women completely lost themselves in a tactical, highly professional military council.
And Liselotte... Liselotte stood two meters away, dying of boredom.
After barely thirty seconds of listening to "supply route throughput capacity" and "the specific weight of load-bearing beams," the maid's vision completely blurred.
Her demonic tail dropped limply to the gravel.
This was dreadfully, unforgivably boring!
Suddenly, a saving spark ignited in her warped head.
The Quest Log!
She remembered point four, which she had scrawled with her phallic pen mere hours earlier: Be utilized as Mistress's personal footstool.
Her ruby eyes blazed with sudden excitement. Instead of just daydreaming, it was time to move to action!
With noiseless agility, without making even the faintest click with her heels, Liselotte dropped to her knees right in front of the stone block Nyssara was sitting on.
She slowly lay flat on her stomach on the cool stone, right at the Mistress's feet.
She arched her spine into a perfect, sensual curve, raising her round, skirt-clad buttocks slightly and crossing her shapely, stocking-clad calves to create a perfectly stable, soft platform.
Nyssara broke off mid-sentence, casting her gaze downward.
"What the hell are you doing?" the Empress asked, raising an eyebrow.
Liselotte lifted her head from the floor, looking at her with absolute, deadly seriousness in her large ruby eyes.
"I am assisting with the war council, my Mistress," she declared with reverent awe. "An Empress cannot conduct strategic discussions while resting her feet on cold, filthy stone. A throne without a footstool is a blatant insult to imperial majesty. I hereby place my body at your absolute disposal."
Elarienne froze with her mouth open, then brought a hand to her forehead with a heavy sigh.
"Liselotte... this is extreme absurdity, even by your standards."
Nyssara, however, did not push the servant away. She observed her for a few seconds.
She saw the flush on Liselotte's cheeks, saw the trembling tips of her elven ears, and that boundless, masochistic yearning in her eyes.
This girl wasn't faking it - she genuinely, with all her depraved heart, desired to be trampled beneath her boot.
A slow, predatory smirk bloomed on the Empress's lips.
"If you insist..."
Nyssara slowly raised her right leg and, without a shadow of hesitation, planted her foot squarely on the lower back of the prone maid, right above her round buttocks.
A moment later, her other foot joined it, resting the entire weight of the Mistress's legs on her arched body.
"Haaahn...!" a muffled, wet moan of pure ecstasy escaped Liselotte's lips.
The sensation of the hard sole pressing her body into the stone floor was like the most magnificent reward to her.
She closed her eyelids, a quiet trickle of drool dripping from her lips as she nuzzled her cheek against the cold basalt.
Her breathing became heavy, hot, and ragged, and every minor shift of Nyssara's boot sent a wave of burning tingles through her lower belly.
The girl was in absolute, perverse heaven.
Nyssara rested her elbows on her knees and, as if absolutely nothing were out of the ordinary, looked back at the blonde standing before her.
"Returning to the topic of the palisade, Elarienne," the Empress resumed calmly, as if a standard velvet piece of furniture resided beneath her feet. "I believe we should fell the trees at the forest edge and sharpen the stakes..."
Elarienne watched the scene for a long moment.
She looked at Nyssara, resting her legs on the servant with total naturalness, then at Liselotte, who was quietly panting on the ground with a blissful smile, trembling with pleasure...
And then the blonde simply offered a slight shrug.
Her earlier shock and moral indignation had completely evaporated.
Over the course of the last few hours, she had simply come to understand one fundamental truth: this little maid was beyond repair.
Rather than squandering energy tilting at windmills, it was vastly simpler to accept her perversions as a permanent fixture of the local landscape.
"I concur regarding the palisade," Elarienne resumed coldly, returning to the map without batting an eye. "Given the current work pace of our demonic laborers, we should be able to seal the main gate within two days."
Around the altar of Gloamreach Vale, new, rugged life was beginning to pulse.
The valley was no longer a dead graveyard of a forgotten past. Five powerful, red demonesses were rolling massive stone blocks with loud thuds, kicking up clouds of dust.
Piles of timber and fresh herbs were stacked beneath the surviving colonnade, and the Sovereign Nexus pulsed with the rhythmic, deep heartbeat of a newborn power.
Occasionally, however, the laboring workers would cast a glance toward the dais.
Their yellow, predatory eyes widened in genuine, mute astonishment when they saw their grand, majestic Empress meticulously planning the conquest of the continent... with her legs nonchalantly resting on the ass of a heavily panting maid.